MOSTAR, Bosnia—It started as a joke. Bosnian writer Veselin Gatalo and two of his friends were sitting in a café at the start of this century talking about heroes. At the time there were plenty of war heroes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where ethnic conflict between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks in the 1990s left around 100,000 dead. After watching one of these “heroes” insult a waiter, Gatalo, who is Serbian, turned to his friends, Sanjin Plakalo, who is Muslim, and Nino Raspudić, who is Croatian.
“Does this country have any heroes?” Gatalo asked.
“We do not,” came the reply.
